This Week in History: 1920 Daylight saving time splits the masses
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:51:35 +0000
One of the big issues on Feb. 29, 1920 was whether Vancouver should adopt daylight saving time. So The Vancouver Sun polled its readers, who responded with gusto.
“Strongly in favour, and I am a mother of six,” said one.
“For God’s sake, leave the time in its right place and don’t put any more work on poor, tired mothers,” countered another.
“Yes, by all means, let us have daylight saving, and I have been a farmer all my life,” said a third.
“We have come to the conclusion that the daylight saving craze is detrimental to the best interests of the miners and hard workers,” said a letter from “twelve miners at Britannia.” “It may suit school teachers and counter jumpers in the city. If so, let them have it, but honest, hard working men have no use for that ‘gold brick.’”
On March 5 the results were announced: 745 in favour of daylight saving, 403 against.
In 1922, the city held a plebiscite on the issue, and it was approved, 5,705 to 4,662. But daylight saving was rejected in a second plebiscite the following year, 3,760 to 1,882, and Vancouver went back to standard time.
The issue kept popping up, so the city held a third plebiscite on May 30, 1928. This time the city said the results would be binding for five years. Once again voters decisively rejected it, 4,537 to 1,035.
“At the city hall it was declared that the women’s vote defeated daylight saving,” said a Sun story on May 31, 1928. “They turned out in great numbers, the argument that the change in time would adversely affect the children evidently having a telling effect.”
But the movement for daylight saving time wouldn’t die. On March 27, 1946, a Sun poll found that 62 per cent of Vancouverites were in favour. The city held another daylight saving plebiscite on March 5, 1947 and the masses voted 18,417 to 8,568 in favour.
The historic Birks clock is reinstalled at the corner of W. Hastings and Granville Streets on Monday, January 11, 2010. Jason Payne/PNG
Three weeks later the provincial government announced it would adopt daylight saving across B.C. on April 27, 1947. But the anti-daylight saving people wouldn’t give up. When The Sun wrote a story calling daylight saving “democratic,” because people had voted in favour of it, a letter writer lashed out.
“While the so-called majority you speak of are enjoying their golf, I wonder if they ever give a thought to the real majority who have another hour of toil forced on them, to the small children and tired mothers who must force their little ones out of their warm beds and off to school,” wrote “Just A Mother.”
“These children are the real sufferers. They need that hour of sleep. Try speeding a motor up beyond its capacity and see what happens; it will run fine for awhile but it will surely wear out long before its time. That is the future for our children.”
The Feb. 29, 1920 Sun had another story on an “attractive little advertising folder” produced by the city that featured a photo of a bear climbing a tree. The caption with the photo read “On the lookout for you, Vancouver, Canada.”
Sounds innocuous enough, but it drew the ire of Vancouver Islanders.
“A FAKED PICTURE,” snorted a headline in the Victoria Daily Times. “Vancouver Publishes Island Scene As One of Its Own.”
Joshua Kingham of Victoria’s Board of Trade claimed the “splendid illustration” had actually been taken “on the Island Highway near Cameron Lake.”
The Sun was bemused by “the enormity of (the city’s) transgression in using a picture taken in Victoria’s precincts as one of Vancouver’s own.”
Vancouver’s “publicity commissioner” J.R. Davison said he’d purchased a copy of the photo off someone on the North Shore. He then had it reproduced on the tourist brochure, which proclaimed the bear had climbed the tree to get a better view of all the ships and trains coming into Vancouver.
“Through winter’s cold nips, there’s plenty of sport up (on the North Shore mountains),” the brochure stated. “While on the sea level golf is being played and pleasure boats are plying. Vancouver is an ideal place for your holiday.”
Maybe so, but the Victoria Board of Trade claimed “Vancouver Island owns the picture, not Vancouver city.”
We couldn’t find a photo of the controversial bear climbing tree photo on the Vancouver Archives website, but it did have a photo of Trotsky the bear at the Vancouver Zoo in Stanley Park in the 1920s. Vancouver Archives AM54-S4-2-: CVA 371-2843.1.
Vancouver Sun story on Feb. 29, 1920 about a photograph of a bear climbing a tree that was used in a Vancouver tourist brochure, but was claimed by Vancouver Islanders.
Vancouver Sun reader poll on daylight saving time on Feb. 29, 1920.
Vancouver Sun story on voters rejecting daylight saving time on May 30, 1928.
Vancouver Sun story on voters rejecting daylight saving time on May 30, 1928.
March 26, 1947 Vancouver Sun story on the B.C. government adopting daylight saving time.
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